INTRODUCTION
ONE PEOPLE, ONE MUSIC?
On a cold January afternoon in 2009, more than 400,000 people gathered near
the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., for a concert in celebration of the
impending inauguration of president-elect Barack Obama. After an opening
rendition of the national anthem by musicians of the armed forces, actor Denzel
Washington greeted the huge crowd with these words, beginning with a para-
phrase of Mr. Obama’s fi rst post-election speech from the previous November:We are not a collection of red states and blue states; we are the United States.
We come here knowing that we are all in this together. So we named this
ceremony that begins this inaugural week with three simple words that
speak to who we are and to our future, and they are We Are One.Yet the concert that followed seemed designed to demonstrate that, musically
at least, the people of the United States are not one but many. The performers
included rock stars, soul singers, rap artists, country crooners, gospel choirs,
and a symphony orchestra.
The music they performed was equally diverse. Only a few songs were per-
formed by the artists who had written them and made them famous: the Irish
rock band U2 performed two of their own songs, and a blue-collar rocker from
Indiana, John Mellencamp, sang his “Pink Houses,” with its patriotism-tinged
chorus beginning “Ain’t that America.” Most of the acts were duets and trios
carefully chosen to combine musicians from different genres, often singing
atypical material. Soul legend Stevie Wonder sang his own “Higher Ground,”
joined by Latina singer Shakira and southern R&B artist Usher. Country singer
Garth Brooks took the stage with a mostly African American gospel choir to per-
form singer-songwriter Don McLean’s “American Pie.” After rapper and actress
Queen Latifah spoke about another concert at the Lincoln Memorial seventy
years earlier, by the great African American contralto Marian Anderson, the
smooth balladeer Josh Groban, Trinidadian R&B singer Heather Headley, and
the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington reprised Anderson’s opening number at
that concert, “America” (“My country, ’tis of thee”). Tom Hanks recited the words
of Abraham Lincoln in a performance by the U.S. Armed Forces Symphony of
Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait. Most bizarre, perhaps, was the vocal duet of
country-pop singer Sheryl Crow and rapper will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas,
singing Bob Marley’s reggae anthem “One Love” while pianist Herbie Hancock
doodled dissonant avant-garde jazz in the background.1
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